Certainly we had a few, and a fair number of domestic political voices were pushing for it, and Truman came out and admitted that it was an option on the table. What were the considerations that turned the eventual decision towards not using them?
It was considered as an option behind closed doors, particularly if the conflict escalated into a war with China.
Apologies for the quote-heavy post.
President-elect Eisenhower dutifully flew to Korea one month after his victory over Adlai Stevenson. There he heard out the plans of U.N. commander General Mark Clark and ROK President Syngman Rhee to win the stalemated war by expanding it. But he spent more time in the lines, listening to the troops. While a dramatic gesture, Eisenhower's trip to Korea had far less to do with the ending of the war six months later than the death of Stalin and the leaked consideration by the U.S. administration of bombing and blockading the Chinese mainland, and perhaps even employing of nuclear weapons. It is difficult to determine just how serious Eisenhower and Dulles were in their consideration of the nuclear option. A howl of execration had arisen from America's allies over the mere bombing of North Korean hydroelectric plants south of the Yalu in June of 1952. The breaking of the nuclear "tabu" (as Dulles termed it), that is, the use of nuclear weapons once again solely by the United States and once again solely against Asians would have represented an unimaginable moral disaster for America. Thankfully, this "thinking out loud" within the new administration progressed no further than the contingency plan stage.
The Korean War: An Encyclopedia (from page 104, available on Google Books)
Sources cited for this entry:
Ambrose, Stephen. Eisenhower: Soldier General of the Army, President-Elect
Divine, Robert A. Eisenhower and the Cold War
Donovan, Robert J. Eisenhower: The Inside Story
Lee, R. Alton. Dwight D. Eisenhower: Soldier and Statesman
Another question. Would this even have been a consideration? The Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test in 1949, wouldn't the US using a bomb not even be considered due to a MAD type deal?